The research team, led by Deborah A. Olarte, PhD, RD, Assistant Professor of Nutrition at New York University, conducted online interviews with 25 elementary school teachers drawn from six elementary schools in Anchorage, Alaska. The study used an observational, qualitative design, asking teachers to reflect on two consecutive school years: the 2021–2022 school year, when the federal universal free school meals policy was in effect, and the following school year, after the policy had ended. This before-and-after structure gave researchers a rare window into how a single policy change rippled through classrooms, cafeterias, and family budgets as perceived by the educators who spend every day with young children.

Universal free school meals emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic as a federal waiver system that allowed schools across the United States to serve breakfast and lunch to all students at no charge, removing the income-based applications and eligibility categories that normally determine who pays and who eats for free. When those waivers lapsed, most districts returned to the traditional tiered system, in which families must qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on household income while other students pay full or reduced rates. The Anchorage teachers in this study experienced that transition directly, and their accounts form the core of the new analysis.

During the year of universal free meals, teachers described a classroom environment noticeably freed from food-related worry. They reported that providing free meals to all students reduced concerns about hunger and eased financial stress for families. Because every child received meals on the same terms, the program also carried the potential to reduce the stigma that can attach to means-tested meal programs, a dynamic the researchers highlight in their conclusions. Not every observation was positive: some teachers perceived that food waste increased while meals were universally free, a concern frequently raised in debates over universal meal policies. Yet when asked what benefits emerged after the policy ended, the teachers could not identify any. Instead, the post-expiration period brought a cluster of problems.

After universal free school meals ended, many teachers observed that fewer students participated in school meals, that more students appeared hungry during the school day, and that some children expressed worry about the cost of meals. Several teachers reported going further than observation: they provided food to students themselves when they noticed children without enough to eat. That detail underscores a quiet reality of American classrooms, in which educators often absorb gaps left by policy, spending their own resources to keep students fed and ready to learn. The study suggests that when the federal safety net narrowed, the burden did not disappear; it shifted onto families and, in some cases, onto teachers.

The anxiety teachers witnessed extended beyond hunger itself to the mechanics of paying for food. Children who once ate without a second thought began expressing concern about meal costs, an emotional burden that educators found visible in the classroom. The researchers frame this as evidence that school meal policies influence more than nutrition. As Olarte explained, teachers witness firsthand how hunger affects students’ ability to learn, focus, and participate in the classroom, and their experiences provide valuable insight into how school meal policies can influence not only nutrition but also student well-being and the overall classroom environment.

The study also captured a dimension of school meals that rarely appears in policy debates: the classroom experience of eating together. Teachers described benefits of eating meals in the classroom, including stronger classroom communities, improved student behavior, and more opportunities to build relationships with students. Shared mealtimes, in this account, functioned as social infrastructure, moments when the boundaries between instruction and care blurred productively. At the same time, the teachers were candid about the costs to themselves. Supervising meals created additional clean-up responsibilities and reduced the planning time they needed for instruction, a trade-off that any future policy design would need to weigh.

The researchers conclude that teacher perspectives should be considered when designing future school meal policies. That recommendation carries weight because teachers occupy a unique observational position: they see children for hours each day, across months, in settings where hunger, distraction, and anxiety are difficult to hide. Survey instruments and cafeteria participation statistics can quantify how many meals were served, but they cannot easily capture a child hesitating at a register, worrying about a balance owed, or quietly declining a meal. The qualitative method used here, built on in-depth interviews rather than standardized questionnaires, is designed to surface exactly those lived experiences and to translate them into evidence that policymakers can act upon.

The findings arrive at a moment when the role of school meals in child well-being is under active discussion across the United States. Some states have moved to adopt their own universal free school meal programs after the federal waivers ended, while other districts continue to operate under the traditional income-based eligibility model. The Anchorage study offers a grounded case study of what the rollback looked like from the front of the classroom: increased hunger, increased anxiety about meal costs, and decreased participation in the very programs designed to feed children. The authors suggest that universal free school meals may help improve student well-being, reduce stigma surrounding school meals, and support a more positive learning environment, positioning the policy not merely as a nutrition program but as an educational intervention with consequences visible in attention, behavior, and classroom community.

For the teachers at the center of the study, the contrast between the two school years was stark enough to reshape how they think about food in schools. During universal free meals, they saw fewer hungry children and calmer families; after the policy ended, they saw the reverse, and some began feeding students out of their own supplies. The study, titled When School Meals Are No Longer Free: A Qualitative Exploration of Elementary School Teachers’ Experiences and Perceptions, does not claim to measure outcomes across an entire district or to establish causation with statistical precision. What it does provide is a detailed, systematic record of educator perceptions during a natural policy experiment, gathered from 25 teachers across six schools and published in a journal that reaches the nutrition education professionals who shape school food programs. As states and districts weigh whether to extend or restore universal meal access, the message from these classrooms is that the price of a school lunch is visible not only on a family’s bill but in a child’s ability to focus, participate, and feel secure during the school day.

Subject of Research: Teacher-reported effects of the expiration of the federal universal free school meals policy on elementary students in Anchorage, Alaska

Article Title: Elementary school teachers report increased student hunger and anxiety after universal free school meals ended

Article References: Elementary school teachers report increased student hunger and anxiety after universal free school meals ended. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: universal free school meals, school nutrition, child hunger, elementary education, Anchorage Alaska, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, food insecurity, student well-being, classroom behavior, school meal participation, qualitative research, education policy

The research, led by Deborah Olarte, assistant professor of nutrition at New York University Steinhardt, interviewed 25 elementary school teachers in the Anchorage School District in Alaska. The timing of the study design was deliberate. During the 2021-2022 school year, Anchorage schools participated in the universal free school meal program, a federal initiative that provided breakfast and lunch to every student regardless of family income. In the 2022-2023 school year, that program ended, and schools reverted to the traditional model in which meals are subsidized only for students who qualify based on economic need. Because the same teachers worked across both years, they could serve as natural comparison observers, describing how the same children, classrooms, and school routines changed when the meal guarantee vanished.

The researchers asked open-ended questions focused on the benefits and challenges of offering free meals to students, and the answers painted a consistent picture. During the universal meal period, teachers perceived reduced stress for both students and families, along with fewer visible signs of food insecurity in the classroom. One teacher explained the mechanism plainly: children who would have felt shy about admitting they were hungry or that they had no lunch no longer had to worry, because food was simply provided to everyone. The stigma that had long surrounded free or reduced-price meals—an enduring barrier documented in school nutrition research—dissolved when every tray was free.

That period was not without drawbacks, and the teachers were candid about them. The most commonly cited downside of universal meals was increased food waste, as students who were not hungry, or who took meals out of convenience, discarded uneaten portions. Food waste has been a persistent concern in school meal policy debates, and opponents of universal programs frequently point to it as evidence of inefficiency. Yet in the overall accounting offered by the teachers interviewed, the waste was outweighed by what the program prevented: hunger, shame, and the classroom disruptions that follow both.

After the program’s expiration, the observations shifted sharply. Teachers reported increased student hunger, more frequent behavioral issues, greater difficulty concentrating, and rising anxiety among students about paying for meals. They also described changes in their own behavior: teachers became more likely to reach into their own pockets and provide food for students, a quiet subsidy that rarely appears in any policy ledger. Perhaps most striking from a nutrition standpoint, teachers observed increased consumption of sugary snacks and beverages and ultra-processed foods, alongside a decrease in school meal participation—particularly among students who were eligible for free meals under the traditional income-based rules.

That last finding may seem paradoxical, but it aligns with a well-documented phenomenon in school nutrition research. Eligibility for subsidized meals does not guarantee participation. Application paperwork, enrollment lapses, household instability, language barriers, and the social stigma of being identified as a free-meal student all suppress take-up even among children who qualify. When universal meals removed those friction points, participation rose; when they returned, participation fell, and the children who lost the most were often those the safety net was nominally designed to protect. Meanwhile, the calories that filled the gap came disproportionately from cheap, shelf-stable, heavily marketed products rather than balanced meals.

The classroom consequences described by teachers were vivid. According to one teacher interviewed in the study, some children were simply hungry all afternoon, could not focus, and disruptive behaviors followed. Hunger’s effect on cognition and behavior is well established in the scientific literature: fluctuations in blood glucose, the physiological stress of food insecurity, and the mental preoccupation of worrying about a next meal all compete with attention, working memory, and self-regulation—the very capacities elementary classrooms depend upon. Teachers in the study effectively described these mechanisms playing out in real time, as afternoon lessons became harder to deliver and behavior management consumed more instructional time.

Olarte emphasized that teachers occupy a unique vantage point in the school meal policy landscape. Participation data can show that fewer students ate lunch, she noted, but teachers can explain why a student did or did not eat and how the consequences presented in the classroom. In her view, universal free school meals removed a worry from the school day, and when the meals went away, the worry came back—and teachers watched it play out in front of them. Her comments also highlighted a less visible dimension of the policy shift: the burden that school meal programs place on educators themselves. Teachers in the study described buying snacks, cleaning up, and absorbing the logistical and emotional fallout of student hunger, and Olarte argued that this burden may shape families’ decisions about whether to participate in school meals at all, an underexamined feedback loop in nutrition policy research.

The study’s authors are careful about the limits of their design. As a qualitative survey of 25 teachers in a single district, the research captures perceptions and experiences rather than measured dietary intake or standardized achievement outcomes. Teachers gave the researchers one window into the policy shift, Olarte noted, and she called for future work that includes the voices of students, parents, administrators, and food service staff across different districts and states. Anchorage itself is an instructive setting: Alaska’s high cost of living and long winters amplify food insecurity, and a single district’s experience may not generalize uniformly across the country. Still, the consistency of the themes—hunger, stress, stigma, junk food substitution, and lost focus—echoes concerns raised by school nutrition advocates in the many states where universal meal programs ended in 2022.

The policy stakes remain live. Since the federal waivers expired, a number of states have enacted their own universal free school meal programs, while others have not, creating a natural patchwork for future comparative research. The Anchorage study suggests that the consequences of that patchwork are not abstract. They arrive in classrooms as afternoon hunger, as children anxious about lunch balances, as teachers quietly stocking granola bars in desk drawers, and as students trading balanced meals for sugary drinks and ultra-processed snacks. Funding for the study was provided by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. As districts and lawmakers weigh the costs of feeding every child, the teachers’ testimony offers a ground-level answer to a question that participation statistics alone cannot: what the end of universal free meals actually felt like, for the children living it and the educators watching it happen.

Subject of Research: The impact of ending the pandemic-era universal free school meal program on student hunger, diet, and classroom behavior as perceived by teachers

Article Title: End of free school meal program led to increased stress and hunger, poorer diets, and reduced focus, say teachers

Article References: End of free school meal program led to increased stress and hunger, poorer diets, and reduced focus, say teachers. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: school meals, child nutrition, food insecurity, teachers, classroom behavior, universal free meals, student hunger, ultra-processed foods, education policy, Anchorage, NYU, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior

The selection process behind these awards is grounded in the journal’s internal editorial governance rather than external popular vote. Nominated and eligible articles published in the prior year in JNEB are evaluated by members of the Journal Committee and the JNEB Board of Editors, who judge the outstanding contributions in each category. Lead authors of the winning and finalist works receive a monetary award, and the recognized articles are featured on the journal’s website, giving the winning research a prominent platform beyond its original publication. This structure is designed to reward both scientific excellence and practical utility in a field that sits at the intersection of behavioral science, public health, and education.

In the flagship Best Article category, the top honor went to a team led by Caitlyn B. Faul, MPH, RD, LDN, CDCES, together with Stephanie Jilcott Pitts, Eric E. Calloway, Hilary K. Seligman, Heidi Reis, Cheryl Webb Cherry, Irene E. Hatsu, Oyinlola Toyin Babatunde, Alexandra L. MacMillan Uribe, Jared T. McGuirt, and Rebecca A. Seguin-Fowler. Their winning article, titled A Meta-Ethnography to Determine Critical Constructs of Nutrition Security, tackles one of the most consequential conceptual shifts in contemporary nutrition policy: the move from measuring food security alone toward a fuller understanding of nutrition security. Meta-ethnography is a rigorous qualitative synthesis method that interprets findings across multiple qualitative studies, and by applying it to this domain the authors aimed to identify the critical constructs that define what it means for households and individuals to be nutritionally, not merely calorically, secure.

The significance of that work reflects a broader reorientation in American food policy discourse. Where food security has traditionally been assessed by access to sufficient calories, nutrition security emphasizes the consistent availability of foods and beverages that promote well-being and prevent diet-related chronic disease. A meta-ethnographic approach is technically demanding because it requires researchers to translate concepts across studies conducted in different settings with different populations, preserving the interpretive richness of the original qualitative work while producing a coherent synthesis. The award committee’s decision to recognize this article signals the field’s growing interest in frameworks that can guide practitioners and policymakers as they design programs intended to improve dietary quality rather than simply alleviate hunger.

The Best Article Finalist Award was presented to a large collaborative team whose article examined a policy question with immediate relevance to millions of American schoolchildren. Juliana F.W. Cohen, ScD, RD, along with Monica D. Zuercher, Dania Orta-Aleman, Leah E. Chapman, Christina A. Hecht, Kenneth Hecht, Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, Deborah A. Olarte, Anisha I. Patel, Michele Polacsek, Marlene B. Schwartz, Lorrene D. Ritchie, and Wendi Gosliner, were honored for their article Impact of Deimplementing Universal Free School Meals: School Food Authority Perspectives. Deimplementation, the deliberate process of discontinuing an established practice, is an emerging focus in implementation science, and universal free school meals have been among the most widely debated nutrition policies of recent years. By gathering the perspectives of school food authorities, the entities responsible for operating school meal programs, the study captures the operational and practical consequences experienced on the ground when such programs are scaled back.

In the Best Research Brief category, the winning work came from a team led by Eliza Short, PhD, RDN, joined by Ji Li, James P. Selig, Kelsey Bounds, Brett Rowland, Bonnie Faitak, Jazmin Lane, Rosana Solis-Garcia, Holly C. Felix, Krista Langston, Pearl A. McElfish, Juan Mejia-Otera, Lauren Haggard-Duff, and Christopher R. Long. Their article, Medically Tailored Grocery Delivery for Food Pantry Clients with Diabetes, investigates an intervention model that sits at the frontier of food-is-medicine approaches. Medically tailored grocery programs adapt the foods delivered to clients to align with their clinical conditions, in this case diabetes, and deliver them through food pantry channels that already serve people experiencing food insecurity. Research briefs are a distinct article format in JNEB, designed to communicate focused studies concisely, and the recognition of this work highlights how compact study designs can illuminate interventions with direct clinical and programmatic implications.

The Best Research Brief Finalist Award went to Samantha M. Sundermeir, PhD, MS, RDN, and colleagues Mika Matsuzaki, Angela Zhang, Jane C. Obi, Joel Gittelsohn, and Megan R. Winkler for their article Characterizing the Consumer Food Environment of Dollar Stores and Exploring Differences by Neighborhood Racial Composition. Dollar stores have expanded rapidly across the United States and have become a significant source of groceries for many communities, particularly in rural areas and neighborhoods underserved by traditional supermarkets. Systematically characterizing the consumer food environment, the range, price, and quality of foods available to shoppers, within these stores, and then examining how those environments differ according to the racial composition of surrounding neighborhoods, addresses an important equity question in food access research. The study exemplifies the kind of environmental assessment work that underpins effective nutrition education and policy interventions.

The GEM category, dedicated to Great Educational Material, produced its own winner and finalist. The Best GEM Award was presented to Rebecca Brody, PhD, RD, LD, CNSC, Anca Cunningham, MS, RD, and Jason Stevens, DCN, RDN, for their article Prairietown Regional Medical Center: An AI-Driven Simulation for Teaching Leadership and Change Management to Nutrition Graduate Students. This work represents a notable convergence of nutrition education and emerging technology, using an artificial intelligence-driven simulation to immerse graduate students in realistic leadership scenarios. Change management, the structured approach to guiding organizations through transitions, is a competency that dietetics and nutrition professionals increasingly need as they lead program reforms in clinical and community settings, and simulation-based learning offers a low-risk environment in which students can practice these skills before applying them in professional practice.

The Best GEM Finalist Award recognized Jennifer A. Garner, PhD, RD, and coauthors Jennifer C. Shrodes, Katharine Garrity, Songzhu Zhao, Emmanuella Aboagye-Mensah, Amaris Williams, Guy Brock, Jennifer Hefner, Daniel M. Walker, and Joshua J. Joseph for Cooking Matters for Diabetes: A Curriculum to Support Diabetes Self-Management Among Individuals Facing Food Insecurity. Curricula of this kind translate behavioral nutrition science into structured, teachable programs, combining cooking skills with diabetes self-management education for populations where food insecurity complicates disease management. The dual recognition of this curriculum and the AI-driven simulation in the same category illustrates the breadth of educational innovation the GEM award is intended to celebrate, spanning community-based cooking education and technology-enhanced graduate training.

Congratulating the recipients, JNEB Editor-in-Chief Lauren Haldeman, PhD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, said that the research recognized through these awards demonstrates the innovation, rigor, and dedication of the authors. As nutrition education continues to evolve to meet new challenges and opportunities, she noted, the evidence produced by these researchers is helping educators, practitioners, and communities make informed decisions that improve health outcomes, adding that the journal is proud to celebrate their contributions to the field. Taken together, the 2026 award portfolio paints a picture of a discipline actively grappling with the most pressing questions in food and health: how to define and measure nutrition security, how to manage the consequences of major school meal policy shifts, how food retail environments shape dietary equity, how food-is-medicine interventions can serve people managing chronic disease, and how the next generation of nutrition professionals can be trained with the aid of new technologies. The recognized articles are featured on the journal’s awards page, where readers can explore the full body of honored work.

Subject of Research: 2026 Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior awards recognizing outstanding nutrition education and behavior research and educational materials

Article Title: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior announces 2026 Best Article, Best Research Brief, and GEM awards

Article References: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior announces 2026 Best Article, Best Research Brief, and GEM awards. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, nutrition education, nutrition security, universal free school meals, food insecurity, medically tailored groceries, dollar stores, diabetes self-management, AI simulation, Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior, research awards, Elsevier

The research team, led by corresponding author Shujuan Zhu, MSc, RN, of the Department of Gynecology at The Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University in Changsha, China, conducted in-depth interviews with 20 women diagnosed with PCOS, 13 doctors, and four nurses at hospitals in Hunan Province. Rather than testing a hypothesis with numbers, the researchers used grounded theory analysis, a qualitative method in which themes and concepts are systematically derived from interview data itself. From this analysis they built a framework describing three progressive stages of health behavior change: intention, adoption, and maintenance. Crucially, they also identified disengagement as a dynamic state that can arise at any point along the way, not merely as a final failure at the end of the process.

The first stage, intention, was found to be driven largely by physical and psychological needs. For many of the women interviewed, the decision to consider healthier eating and increased physical activity was triggered by concerns about fertility, by the burden of PCOS symptoms, and by effects on self-esteem. Changes in knowledge and understanding also played a role, suggesting that how well a patient comprehends the condition and its relationship to lifestyle can influence whether she forms the intention to change at all. In the context of PCOS, a metabolic and endocrine condition affecting many women of reproductive age, these motivators are particularly potent because the syndrome touches fertility, appearance, and long-term health simultaneously.

Moving from intention to actual behavior, what the researchers call the adoption stage, depended on a different set of factors. Self-efficacy, the confidence in one’s own ability to carry out a behavior, emerged as an important support, alongside health information literacy, meaning the capacity to find, understand, and apply health information. Access to resources and social support also helped women translate good intentions into concrete changes in diet and activity. This stage-by-stage distinction matters for clinical practice: the factors that get someone to the point of wanting to change are not necessarily the same ones that allow her to act on that intention, and interventions designed without recognizing this difference may miss their target.

The maintenance stage proved to be the rarest. Only a few participants reached it, and among those who did, the researchers identified several sustaining mechanisms: goal setting, self-regulation, a sense of identity connected to the healthy behavior, and positive feedback that reinforced continued effort. In other words, women who maintained healthy habits over time had internalized those habits as part of who they were, rather than treating them as a temporary project. Positive feedback, whether from the body itself, from clinicians, or from the social environment, appeared to close a loop in which early success fueled ongoing commitment.

Yet the dominant experience reported in the study was not steady progress. Most patients experienced disengagement at some point, and the researchers found that this could occur at any stage of the process. Personal limitations, environmental constraints, disease-related barriers, and the sheer time, cost, and complexity of sustaining healthy behaviors could outweigh the factors supporting change. A woman might form a firm intention and still stall before adoption, or adopt new habits and later slip back, because the balance of supporting and restraining forces shifted around her. This framing reframes relapse not as an endpoint but as a fluctuating state within an ongoing process.

That reframing carries a pointed message for how clinicians and the public interpret setbacks. “Behavioral disengagement should not simply be viewed as a personal failure of willpower,” said Zhu in the news release accompanying the study. “It may reflect a dynamic state in which restraining factors outweigh the factors supporting continued behavior change.” The quote captures the study’s central conceptual contribution: disengagement is best understood as the product of an imbalance between competing influences, rather than as a character flaw. For patients who already contend with the stigma and frustration that can accompany PCOS, this perspective may reduce self-blame and open the door to more constructive problem-solving.

The practical implications the researchers draw from their framework are correspondingly specific. They suggest that health care providers assess where an individual patient currently sits within the behavior change process, whether at intention, adoption, or maintenance, and then address the particular factors affecting her progress at that stage. Tailored interventions that strengthen supportive factors while actively reducing barriers may help women with PCOS move toward sustained healthy behaviors. In practice, this could mean pairing education with resource access for patients still forming intentions, building self-efficacy and social support for those attempting adoption, and reinforcing identity and self-regulation for those working to maintain gains. A one-size-fits-all prescription, the framework implies, is unlikely to serve patients whose obstacles differ so widely by stage.

The authors also flag the limits of what their study can claim. As a qualitative, grounded theory investigation conducted with participants at hospitals in a single Chinese province, its framework was generated from a specific population and context. The researchers call for future research to test the framework in other populations and cultural settings, and to examine more closely how interventions can adapt as individuals’ behavioral status changes over time. Because grounded theory generates explanatory models rather than statistical estimates, quantitative validation will be needed to confirm how generalizable the three-stage structure and its supporting and restraining factors are across different health systems, cultures, and patient groups.

Even with those caveats, the study adds a valuable piece to the broader picture of how chronic-condition self-management actually unfolds. For the estimated millions of women worldwide living with polycystic ovary syndrome, the findings suggest that the path to healthier eating and regular physical activity is less a test of resolve than a negotiation between personal capacity, environment, disease burden, and the practical demands of daily life. For the clinicians who care for them, the message is to meet patients where they are in that negotiation, to expect setbacks as part of the process rather than as its failure, and to design support that shifts the balance of forces back toward progress whenever disengagement begins to take hold.

Subject of Research: Health behavior change processes among women with polycystic ovary syndrome

Article Title: Study reveals complex, nonlinear process of health behavior change among women with polycystic ovary syndrome

Article References: Study reveals complex, nonlinear process of health behavior change among women with polycystic ovary syndrome. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: polycystic ovary syndrome, PCOS, health behavior change, grounded theory, qualitative research, nutrition education, physical activity, behavioral maintenance, disengagement, self-efficacy, patient interviews, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior